Social Media Privacy – The Power Is In Your Hands

This week continues the debate on social media and privacy. It’s surprising to me that 13 million people are completely unaware of their Facebook privacy settings. If you’re going to maintain social media profiles, it’s important that you’re aware of who can see the information that you’re posting. I try to check in with my Facebook privacy settings somewhat regularly because the network is constantly evolving. In fact, I just adjusted my privacy settings on the network today.

Even though I’m well aware of the privacy settings of the social networks that I maintain, it seems as though I may be in the minority. We were asked what the social networks could do to help more users to understand their own level of control over their information, but I wonder if that’s even their job. It’s our information and reputations, shouldn’t we be the ones seeking out our privacy settings?

Sure it would be helpful for the networks to inform users how they can manage their privacy settings, but I don’t think that they’re doing anything ethically wrong by not going out of their way to insure that every user is aware of how much of their information is being seen by the world. They could highlight it in the terms and conditions when users are signing up for an account, but honestly, how many users are actually reading through the agreements that they sign? The power lies in the hands of the users.

Professor Norm Lewis raises some interesting questions about whether or not it’s ethical to approach potential interviewees on social media without identifying your intentions. Having served as an editor for a daily newspaper, I can see both sides of this issue. I know the pressures that exist in the newsroom when everyone is trying to break the next big story, but I can appreciate interviewees wishing to have privacy on their social media networks.

Social media definitely blurs the lines a bit of what is acceptable when approaching a potential interviewee. Is approaching a potential interviewee on Facebook or Twitter evasive? Yes. Is it unethical to approach them via social media or republish content from their social pages? No. It’s the social media user’s responsibility to understand their privacy settings. If they don’t want the world to see what they’re posting, they have the capability to limit who can see their post…better yet, they can choose not to post about certain events at all! If an event is truly private, I’m not going to blast about it on social media.

As a journalist, I’ve used social media to contact and research potential story leads or subject matters. If they have a provocative and useful quote on their page, that’s fair game. That being said, I also try to respect peoples’ privacy on social sites. If they have their page set to private, I’ll send them a message explaining who I am, and what my intentions are. It’s all about finding the right balance.